4.3.7. DJIMINI SHOWS THE STRUGGLE UP CLOSE

MEMORIES THAT ILLUSTRATE A UNIVERSAL STORY

The narrators' most significant statements are in italics.

      Aubin, p.431

The villages are on the trade route.

Background

Traders arrive from Kong toward 1700-1740. The luxuries they bring strengthen the elders, who use them for fines and dowries. 

When the traders become more numerous, stronger control appears. At a village on the trade route (Kondougou) a chief replaces the elders: His wives grow provisions for the newcomers and his sons bring the kola from the forest.

 

*     *

Fighting breaks out. Toward 1830-1840 (?*). 

*Peasant time is based on seasons. So unless dates are connected with events, such as after traders come from Kong or before the advent of Samory (please read on), narrators do not know when they took place.

A document in the Dakar archives states that Gnapon's son (Nambolosse, whom we will come to) was killed in 1878, when he was "too old to fight." Gnapon would have become chief when he was young and vigorous, when there would have time for the evolution described here and that would correspond to the deeper change in the north that the next section explains.

*     *

Tofanga is captured. His opponents take him to their village. But he has a friend, the warrior Gnapon. Gnapon hides behind a tree and signals his presence by singing a pagan song. Tofanga sings back. 

• The "pagan" song shows a fight between Muslims and animists. 

The details of the rescue change from village to village, but all mention the "pagan" song. So Tofanga and Gnapon were animists, their opponents Muslims, that is, traders. Their village would be a commercial center that was small but expanding.  

• The casus belli must be that Tofango rejects the cowrie currency.

Narrators did not know the reason for the fight or when cowries came in, simply saying that they were widespread by Samory's time (we are coming to him too), the 1890's. Since a market required currency, one can assume that cowries, the Bokhala market and the transfer of leadership come at the same time. 

• Tofanga voluntarily cedes power to Gnapon, who as a warrior represents might.

Gnapon howls. When residents of the enemy village leave to see what is happening, Tofanga escapes. He tells Gnapon that he could give him a wife [the traditional reward] but as"a woman might come between us," he cedes power instead.

Here too the words are always the same: "A woman might come between us." The defeated Tofanga has no power to cede, but insisting on the voluntary transfer shows that the animist population approves the stronger authority.

Gnapon's village, Bokhala, becomes a market, which a marabout strengthens with his prayers.

The marabout sells beads and other articles of little value. So he is a Dyula, or petty local trader. The Soninke and Hausa have no importance yet.

*     *

Gnapon gives merchants divisible currency and the stronger chief who can prevent boycotts, thefts, closing routes and ambushes. For the Senufo he halts more disruption of their way of life.

At about that time, Hausa are expelled from certain kingdoms and as we will see, millenarian movements begin.

The upheaval in Djimini 

       is part of a general transformation.

End of this section.

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The next section,

4.4.

Destabilized crowds sweep the savannah